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When his soccer coaches at Merrimack High School would have the team do running drills, most players would cringe.

Not Jarrod Ottman. He loved it. “Running,” he said, “was kind of my thing.”

Maybe that’s why Ottman eventually gave up soccer for cross country. It seemed like he was born to run.

A few years later, Ottman has left his mark unlike very few athletes could at Thomas College, a small Division III business-oriented school in Waterville, Maine. Earlier this week he was named the school’s Outstanding Senior Athlete as he holds at least 10 track and field and cross country records. In fact, his drive as freshman helped create the resurgence of the school’s indoor and outdoor track and field program, where none had existed at the time. And this is a school, ironically, that has seen many soccer players move on to international circles.

Ottman became the foundation of the school’s cross country and track programs, and as he graduates from Thomas, he will likely be hailed somewhat as a pioneer as arguably, as a senior video put together by the athletic department, called him the most decorated athlete in track and cross country in the school’s history.

“I would say he worked hard to put us on the map with that program,” Thomas cross country coach Kerry Smart said of Ottman’s influence on track gaining varsity status at the school. “He was able to go to meets and represent us when we didn’t have a program and do very well. He would go to these big meets and hold his own and make a mark that will be hard to fill in future years.”

“We really didn’t have a program my freshman year,” Ottman said. “We were just a club team until my junior year.

“That’s what kind of meant a lot to me. Coming in my freshman year, we had six to eight people on the (track) team. Just watching the program grow, from eight people to like 38 people.

“Just the progression, and the team as a whole. I was there when we were going to meets and they wouldn’t let us score. Now we’re a full-blown varsity team just in four years, we were competitive with other teams.”

In fact, in their first varsity season, Thomas came in third in a post season Tri-Conference meet.

“Just to watch that grow was pretty cool,” Ottman said. “Not many people can say they’ve been a part of building a foundation at a school like that.”

“Jarrod raised the level of running at Thomas College and helped his teammates aim higher,” Terriers track coach Ian Wilson said. “He was critical in bringing good runners to the college because they had heard of him and this improved the credibility of the program.”

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Ottman was looking at other colleges when he found Thomas. He was considering Niagara University, a Division I school in central New York, among others, when he stumbled upon Thomas.

“I just looked at Thomas,” he said. “I wanted to be far from home, but I wanted to be a drive from home. A decent drive, but not right down the road. Thomas is this small, little business school.”

He delved more into it at a college fair, then took a visit, met Smart, and the rest is history. When he inquired about the track team, he was told that the Terriers were searching for a new coach.

He liked how you could know everyone on campus. “It’s a really nice school for being small,” he said. “I ended up going there to run cross country. I only ran cross country (at Merrimack) my senior year. I loved track, I always have, but I just wanted to run cross country and if they were looking for people for track, why would I run in the fall and take indoor (winter) and outdoor (spring) off, it didn’t really make sense. So that’s how things went from there.”

Smart will say she recruited Ottman – kinda sorta. “It’s almost like he recruited me because he was such a go-getter,” she said. “That summer we talked quite a bit. He had traveled to New Mexico to nationals. I knew from the beginning he was engaged.”

That senior year at Merrimack he was no slouch, finishing 19th in the boys Division I meet and 27th in the Meet of Champions. His best track finish was sixth place in the 1600 outdoors.

“I excelled in one year of running more than I ever had in soccer,” Ottman said. “I just liked the community for running a lot more. I wasn’t playing a lot in soccer (for the Tomahawks) so I knew I could make the switch.”

The next step was college. He found the competition tough his freshman and sophomore year, “because I was pretty new to it. In the big meets you had other conferences, like the NESCAC, Bates, Bowdoin and Colby. I was running against them and I was like ‘Holy cow, these guys are absolute beasts.”

Ottman says that he and Smart “clicked”, but the Terriers coach said that didn’t happen right away as they had butted heads.

“To be honest, because we love this story, he and I didn’t quite mesh at first,” Smart said. “He had to kind of buy into my system, but that being said I think I had to bend a bit, because I hadn’t coached a kid like him before.”

What was different? “He was smart, he knew his body,” Smart said. “So we really worked to together on what was going to work for him; it wasn’t something that was always going to work for everybody else.

“That first year was really a trust thing for he and I. He was going to tell me what he could handle, and I was going to tell him what I thought could go. It was the building of a relationship, and it kind of turned into a partnership. He trusted I was going to train him to where he wanted to be.”

But by the time he was a junior, Ottman had reached a new level. He won the North Atlantic Conference individual conference championship – the only time that has happened in Thomas College history — and found he could compete against the non-conference powers as well. The next year he was fourth, but that helped propel the Terriers to their best finish as a team, third overall in the NAC.

“I mean, it’s New England, which has some of the most competitive D-III (competition),” he said. “It’s one of the most competitive (Division) III regions.”

He excelled in the3000 meter run indoors (“The perfect mix of speed and distance”). Outdoors he loved the 3000 meter steeple chase.

“It didn’t appeal to me at first,” he said. “My freshman year I was like ‘Sure, I’ll try it.’ My freshman year I ran it at the Brown Invitational against all the D-I kids and I looked very silly.”

But when that happens, Ottman bounces back, thanks to his competitive nature.

“I turn everything into a competition,” he said, “which can be good and bad, depending on what you’re doing. It helps a lot in track, having a competitive edge helps me a lot. If I’m kind of back (in a race) that competitive edge kicks in and I can put myself in a better situation sometimes.”

“He’s the total package, everything from working hard to setting goals,” Smart said. “He just gets it.”

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So what’s next for Ottman? He runs every day, often twice. His eventual goal is to be a marathon runner, but he’ll start with half marathons. “I want to get comfortable before I make that jump,” he said.

It will be a change. He won’t be part of a team. “Normally I run for other people, and try to score to help the team,” he said. “Now I’d be running for myself.

“But, you can join club teams, you can join sponsorships, and do all this other stuff. I’m just running for myself right now, and if anything would come my way, cool. But I can just sit back, work the way I want to work, and race for myself.

“It’s more fun with a team, it’s going to be a little different. But in the end if I hit my goals I think I’ll click to it just fine.”

“He works harder than anyone I’ve ever coached,” Smart said. “I think when he gets it in his mind that he wants to do something like that, there’s no stopping him.”

Of course in the real world he would like to put his soon to be obtained business management degree to work, eventually working for a big company when things economically improve.

“And I’ll compete when I can,” he said, noting he’s averaging 75-85 miles a week with no days off. “I won’t give that up.”

Now he leaves behind the memories, the best of which was when he won that NAC cross country title his junior year.

“That was just different,” he said. “I had come off a mediocre summer. We had lost basically our entire squad (from the previous season). We had one other junior and everyone else was a freshman.

“But crossing the finish line after working with those guys, to celebrate with those guys, the ride home, you can’t really forget stuff like that.”

He won’t forget the course, either, as rain and snow, plus high school meets the previous day had made it a muddy gulch in Belfast, Maine. “It was a brutal course,” he said.

But that competitive edge kicked in.

“In my 12 years of coaching, not just at Thomas but in high school, he truly is a gem,” Smart said. “He is a one of a kind athlete that comes through the door.”

But as he exits through that door, Jarrod Ottman has left his mark at a small school in Waterville, Maine.

“He was a pioneer,” Smart said. “He helped lead us and establish a program and a mark in school history that will be tough to beat. They will be tough records to beat. You’ll see his name here for a long time.”

Things at Thomas won’t be the same in the post-Ottman era, it seems.

“It’s a partnership,” Smart said, “that I’m going to miss.”